Insecure bosses will lay down rules, brashly and with much fanfare, announcing that
I’m spelling this out loud and clear so there’ll be no room for interpretation."
But exceptional customer service requires room for interpretation–with your talented, well-trained, and fully empowered employees being invited to work as the interpreters. What I see universally (as a customer service consultant and company culture advisor) is that it's in the interpretation, powered by employee empowerment, that customer-facing magic happens: If this weren’t true, any CEO could read a book on a successful customer-centric company like Zappos or JetBlue or Nordstrom and, stroke for stroke, imitate them successfully. (Actually, if they did read such a book, one of the most prominent things they’d discover is how much room for interpretation these companies give to each and every employee.)
“The first essential for customer service success is to put together a team of great employees; assembling such a team is one of the most important leadership ‘musts’ that there is,” says Sam Patel, a hospitality industry stalwart and the general manager of one of the new breed of modern, economical hotels that have been emerging in the industry of late: the Four Points by Sheraton Jacksonville Baymeadow. “But once that team’s assembled, trained, and indoctrinated in the essentials of your philosophy, you have to avoid the mistake of pulling the leash so tight that they can’t do their best work for you and for the customer,” he continues. “You have to trust your employees to strive, in their own style, to bring benefit to your customers to the very best of that employee’s ability.”
A challenge for you as a boss here is that, sometimes, a frontline worker will be wrong, or at least not fully successful, at making use of the empowerment they’ve been given. What’s essential to keep in mind is that as long as the employee has been wrong in favor of the customer, the employee is still providing superior customer service, service that is better than they would have provided by rigidly following some executive-based rule. Any attempt by an employee to use their best judgment and creativity needs to be celebrated,not criticized, even when it’s a bit awkward or over the top, or, in some other way doesn’t align with your fantasy of how you’d do it yourself if you were working in their shoes.
What I've seen, over and over, is that if you celebrate pro-customer attempts by your employees, you will become legendary for your customer service.
If you don’t–if you rule your roost with excessive rigidity–your unyielding ways will sink you in the eyes of your customers.
The choice of approach–and the choice of futures–is yours.
